05 April 2011, meeting minutes
Agenda #Ground Rules (standard) #Check-In #Reports #Business: top two focus areas membership and infrastructure #Hacking Check-In What have you been working on? *Greg and J. : building model rockets for NAR certification *Dean: working on cleaning spyware of of some boxen; got the old 3-axis circuit drilling machine working again *Scott: building a "Frankenstein" guitar *Josh: working on the carbon-arc torch, melting paperclips *Greg: also brought stuff for Hack-in-the-Box *Angus (as reported by J. in his absence): got a really cool speakers badge from a recent conference in Germany with an ethernet cable lanyard and voice activated LEDs; J. modeled it for the group to great oooohs and ahhhhs. Reports Treasurer: 6 people paid prior to the meeting by PayPal; 2.5 people paid at the meeting. One member paid up for the year in advance! Burn rate at ~$60/month and set to increase to ~$110/month with Greg moving: need to recruit some more members! New Business Another round of work benches All the pledges collected for the first pair of work-benches. Next project is a long, narrow workbench with shelves along the wall with the little drill press accross from the sink/windows. Action for Josh: make a PayPal button so people can make donations towards materials; once up to $125 we'll cut a check and then cut wood! Discussion of new membership classes Review of Rights and Responsibilities for full members (we decided to make "full membership" on a household rather than individual basis). Rights: *Access to the Space *Access to the Skills *Access to tools/classes *Consensus Rights *Internet Resources Responsibilities: *Obey the Rules *Be Cool *Duties (like cleaning and stuff, though this is suitably vague) *Pay Dues/Fees *Be clear about project openness / licensing Possible new membership levels discussed previously on the email list: http://groups.google.com/group/dayton-diode/browse_thread/thread/518b0ddeec7e63b3# 133t-level Member Cost: $13.37 Really just a suggested donation level for supporters / well-wishers. We'll screen print these folks a neat Dayton Diode t-shirt. Action for Jason: start putting screen-print how-to type info on a wiki page. The group accepted the proposal to add this level of membership. This level of membership doesn't have consensus rights. n00b-level Member donate anything over $1 and you have to wear a shirt we choose for you when you come to the space ; - ) 2600-level Member Cost: $26.00 Rights: regular access, like "office hours", that the space would be available/open; a couple hours a week Maybe only make this level of membership available to folks with financial hardship or students or folks with access limitations (commuting from Xenia for example). Discussion focused around the differentiators between "full" membership and this "half-price" membership. What set of Rights and Responsibilities make sense? What's a good value proposition for the prospective 2600'er? Does this member level have consensus rights? J. shared his experience living in a community where there were tiered classes where some people didn't have consensus rights; not a very good dynamic. Maybe would work in our case since the "threat level" is lower; less at stake. Josh brought this up as a way to "segment the market", so there's something "extra" that makes it make sense to become a full member for. No decision reached on this membership level. Hacking Josh showed some folks how to pull and clean carbon rods from zinc-carbon "flashlight" batteries for use as electrodes in the carbon-arc torch. Jason brought in some drum pads and one of our guests (John) gave it a pretty good whirl!